Remotely Controlling our Chicken Coop pt4

Up until now we’ve simply prepared the NodeMCU for programming, before we move on to programming it to do as we want we need to consider how we are going to send commands and retrieve data from our system. While you could set this up with any PC or Laptop, I thought it best to create a small server. For this project, and future projects – the Raspberry PI 3 is perfect for our purposes. It is a low powered computer that can run several Linux distros as well as its own Linux distro Raspbian. It also comes with WiFi and LAN connectivity and a host of other features.

Remotely Controlling our Chicken Coop pt3

Now it is we test our prior setup with the NodeMCU that we covered in the last post.

If you skipped the last section on setting up your NodeMCU with the Arduino IDE, go back HERE and follow the steps to get started.

Anytime you connect a new board to be programmed, I recommend finding a program like the one below to test your board before moving forward. This will save you a ton of problems in determining if the board is correctly selected in the IDE and whether it will work.

Remotely Controlling the Chicken Coop via WIFI

In my search for a way to control the chicken coop over WiFi, I came across a lil board called the NodeMCU ESP 12-E. The ESP family are small microcontrollers with built in WiFi capability. They are used extensively in arduino projects. There is loads of knowledge about how they work and how to incorporate them with arduino projects. All available at your fingertips on the web.

I’m currently in the process of finishing the build of my chicken coop as well as automating it. After losing chickens to neighborhood dogs, and chickens roosting in trees over vehicles all night (WHAT A MESS!) it was time to fix the problems of containing and providing safety for my flock. But with a day job, and family, it can be hard to find the time to take care of my feathery flock as well. So it was time to make a coop for my flock.

There are numerous examples of how to create automated chicken coop doors online, as well as various other systems. I picked from this list and came up with the requirements of my own.